In 2002, Eli Roth (who had obtained a multi-generation dub of the film while in film school) gave a copy to Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles, hoping that Knowles would screen it at that year's Butt-Numb-a-Thon film festival. Later, the boys went their separate ways, going off to college, and the film was largely forgotten.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation was finally finished and premiered in 1989 at the auditorium of the local Coca-Cola plant in Gulfport, Mississippi. In 2014, members of the cast raised money on Kickstarter to re-unite and complete the film with the one scene they were not able to re-create as teenagers: the explosion of the flying wing aircraft. As Raiders of the Lost Ark was not available on any home media format when they began filming, they were forced to collect all kinds of material about the film, including magazine articles, photographs, and even an illicit recording of the film's audio captured during a re-release screening of the original film in 1982. It was shot out of sequence, so due to its long filming period many actors randomly appear at different ages throughout the course of the film. It was made on a shoe-string budget of around $5000, greatly contrasting with the original's $18 million budget. Shooting for the film began in 1982, when Strompolos, Zala and Lamb were only 12 years old, and continued over the next seven summers. Set in 1936, the film pits Indiana Jones (Strompolos) against a group of Nazis who are searching for the Ark of the Covenant which Adolf Hitler believes will make their army invincible. Further information: Raiders of the Lost Ark § Plot

Arc raiders of the lost arc